Day 15 – St. Peter & Paul

In the morning we decided to walk around the area where Dan grew up. It was drizzling and the sky was overcast. Everything looked different again. Sharper, darker, and with more details.

On the way we stopped by the main cathedral. It is sad that most of the decorative elements in the main room were not preserved. The architecture of the place shows it must have been mightily impressive but now, the only thing that is left is the religious oil paintings. We went to the side altar in the front on the right and saw the most amazing stuccoes. It looked like the surface of the oil or water. There were angels up and down on it and baby Jesus and Maria on the front. Baby Jesus was looking up to the well lit area supposedly indicative of heaven, Maria was looking down where it was dark at the world. Here is some more detail on the scene: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius_Cathedral.

The shot above is us passing the national museum.

After that we went to St.Peter and Paul (SPP). This beautiful cathedral was stuccoes all over the place too. It has interesting history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter_and_St._Paul_Church_(Vilnius). There were crowds of tourists everywhere as usual. The ones who were at SPP were extra impressionable. They all came in and stood in the doorway without moving. We were stuck outside negotiating about the starting rain. Finally they started to move away from the entrance and we could come in. The place has quite a bit of female imagery including four main female saints. Could not find any additional information about it.

Then we went to the small forest around Dan’s former house and spent sometime looking at snails. There were loads of them up there. Georgia has given her standard offerings. We saw a street of houses that were there when Dan was growing up. Some are quite beautiful. And then the drizzle intensified.
We ran past the former military school and town. It is amazing how much of the city was closed off without outsider access. Now there are some old decaying buildings and a few new ones. And some new abandoned ones as well – like a thirteen story decaying hospital with broken windows and crumbling walls.

We ran to Maxima to get some cover and regroup. Here is a picture of cheeseburger we saw in the store.

We waited out the rain at Alicia’s and got out at 6pm. T.Nina walked us to the new memorial park where an old DOSAAF building has been magnificently restored, including the statues at the top, to be possibly a new museum.

More snails on the way – much larger ones. We were picking them up from the sidewalk with a stick and putting them on the grass to prevent squashing.

As we were approaching the new bridge we noticed some guy carrying a girl in white across the bridge. It is a tradition for the new brides to be carried across the bridges like that so at first it did not look any different. Then we noticed that the guy looked like he was in pain, and the bride had wings like an angel. Dan said “How about she carry him on her wings.” And then we saw bridesmaids dressed like devils. Apparently it was bachelorette party. And bridesmaids were asking passing males to carry their angel across the bridge – and some were apparently obliging.

We walked up Gedomino hoping to go to Thai restaurant inside the casino (Forgot the name of the casino – it is across the little flower market and near the opera house). On the way Dan noticed an amazing statue of St. George killing the dragon on top of one of the buildings. It looks very heavy up there. Georgia said the dragon was Zmei Gorynich.

Thai restaurant was closed but very nice inside – seats looked like individual lotuses. The downstairs receptionist said that the restaurant would be open for us or that we could go to Tokyo restaurant across, in the same casino and they would serve based on the Thai menu. But that was kind of wrong. We decided to come back to enjoy the surroundings but with more people.

We ordered 2 pizzas from the Pizza Jazz down the street. Georgia picked peach juice and a baloon. Pizza Jazz is an interesting place. Its customer demographic closely matches that of Ivanovo – for the longest time Dan was the only male among tables and tables of female couples. It is a huge 3-story restaurant in what probably used to be administrative building based on the characterless staircase. Pizza and service were good. St.George statue is above this building. Maybe the demographic is related.

Lots of bubbles at bath time tonight.